Karen O. & The Kids—Where The Wild Things Are
(DCG/Interscope Records, 2009)
Review by Hugh Lilly
Earlier this decade, Karen Orzolek, the front woman of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs better known with her last name initialised, recorded a series of acoustic demos at her home and burned them to a CD as a gift for the producer and TV On The Radio guitarist Dave Sitek. K.O. At Home, now bootlegged and floating in the digital ether, is a collection of 14 incredibly glum home-spun tunes. A world away from the punky, raucous art-rock of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the songs pair the timid side of O’s voice with a variety of charmingly out-of-tune guitars, a mouth organ, a scattering of light percussion, and even a French horn.
O returns to a similarly playful territory in her music for Spike Jonze’s forthcoming Where The Wild Things Are, a film based on Maurice Sendak’s much-loved children’s book of the same name. Working with Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, members of the Raconteurs, The Dead Weather and Yeah Yeah Yeahs—including former bandmate Imaad Wasif—and Jonze’s regular composer Carter Burwell, O’s soundtrack resonates a childlike wonder and perfectly captures the spirit of Sendak’s nine-year-old protagonist Max, King of the Wild Things.
O is backed by an untrained children’s choir—“The Kids”—for most of the album, and the soundtrack incorporates a few dialogue selections from the film, opening with Catherine Keener saying to Max, “I could use a story…” This leads into “Igloo,” a simple melody hummed by the awesomely-named Max Records, the star of the film, before “All Is Love,” the soundtrack’s single, jubilantly bursts forth. Hand claps and jangle-pop guitars imbue the record with a sense of joyousness, and this even extends to “Lost Fur,” the only track taken directly from the score. Here Burwell’s music—normally more in sync with the labyrinthine psychological screenplays of Charlie Kaufman, another of Jonze’s frequent collaborators—is given a levity and grace by O, while at the same time retaining Burwell’s trademark introspectiveness.
“Capsize” and “Cliffs,” two tracks not included in the film, are alternately boisterous and delicate, and a cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Worried Shoes” is absolutely enchanting. “Heads Up,” perhaps the best track on the album, borrows from Britt Daniel’s songbook, riffing on Spoon’s rollicking jazzy pop style, and the brief closer “Sailing Home” brings the record full circle, combining Max’s plaintive hummed melody with the upbeat, rhythmic attitude on display throughout the record. While it probably won’t stand up well outside the context of the film, it’s clear that O and her collaborators have successfully created a self-contained aural landscape that superbly reflects Sendak and Jonze’s vision.
Lynn Barber, a British newspaper columnist, wrote her autobiographical memoirs earlier this year. Before they were published, filming was complete on Lone Sherfig’s film adaptation. Nick Hornby, the author of the novels High Fidelity, About A Boy and Fever Pitch—all of which have been turned into successful films—has adapted the book at the same time as he was writing his new novel Juliet, Naked. Unfortunately, multi-tasking doesn’t appear to be his forte: An Education is an occasionally witty but mostly irritating film that tries to balance the tightrope between drama and comedy, but unfortunately for the most part falls headlong into the latter part of that equation, trying too hard for obvious laughs rather than creating well-developed characters.
Jenny, a doe-eyed 16-year-old schoolgirl, is seduced by David, played perfectly by Peter Sarsgaard, a conniving but suave man twice her age, who compulsively lies—about almost anything, it seems—to get her into bed. But far from being apprehensive about his proposition, Jenny uses it as an opportunity to show him off to her classmates—and, for that matter, her teachers and headmistress. Putting on hold her plans to read English at Oxford, she goes on romantic sojourns to European capitals and generally flaunts her newly-acquired debonair man about town. She conspicuously smokes Gauloises, and taunts her friends with plans to live a rarefied, cultured life in Paris, “speaking French all the time and watching lots of French films.” David gets along very well with her father, and finds it disturbingly easy to convince her parents of his suitability for their daughter—in fact, Barber, now a cantankerous sexagenarian nearing retirement, has vociferously blamed her very elderly parents for very nearly ruining her life.
The would-be bachelor extraordinaire takes Jenny on expensive soirées—concerts, dinners and day trips to the countryside—but beneath all the come-ons, faux high-society aspirations and professions of ‘true’ love lies a deeply damaged, conflicted man. Sarsgaard plays him with unnerving conviction but, again due to Hornby’s insistence on infusing the film with a gratuitous, blunt comic edge, has to contend with silly, interruptive gags and outright implausible lines of dialogue. Hornby includes both dreamlike, starry-eyed interludes and moments of tense drama but goes a bit far when he also tries to cram in outsized comedy. There are magnificent instances when drama, humour and romance collide fantastically, and, conversely, moments when the absolute goofiness of certain scenes—telegraphed by the over-the-top score that accompanies the opening titles—is annoyingly overbearing.
The sublimely beautiful 24-year-old actress Carey Mulligan, in her first major role in a feature film, is just not quite right for the part of Jenny. Mulligan plays the character with an all-too-knowing edge—she imbues Jenny with verve and jouissance entirely unbecoming a character of such a young age. Her Jenny is worldly, experienced and not at all the naïve waif that one suspects Barber would like to think she once was. Her accent, while not out-of-place, is annoyingly modern; the story, set in early-’60s London, calls for a slightly less contemporary, more stiff-upper-lip cadence. The supporting cast, happily, is terrific: Emma Thompson (Stranger Than Fiction, Angels in America) is well-cast as Jenny’s headmistress, and Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day) is brilliant in the role of Helen, David’s dim-witted wannabe socialite friend. Cara Seymour (The Savages, Birth) and Alfred Molina are superb as Jenny’s parents, newly-minted members of the upper-middle-class adjusting to their newfound ordinariness. Interestingly, this is not yet the swinging ’60s: the film is set in a London still coming to terms with its deep-seated repression, in an England that has not yet adjusted the bearings of its moral compass.
Danish filmmaker Lone Sherfig’s best known previous films, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself and the Dogme95 film Italian for Beginners, deal with vaguely similar thematic terrain, but An Education lacks the nuanced performances of those previous films—largely, sadly, because of Hornby’s muddled script. The film endlessly panders to an audience of middle-aged women, with certain crudely out-of-place jokes and a number of scenes that beg to be described as “lovely” or “delightful”. Paul Englishby’s pompous, overly emotive score doesn’t help much either. For all its faults, though, it does get some things right: there are picture postcard moments of cinematic beauty—particularly in Paris and around the more affluent areas of London—and many of the performances are top-notch. It’s just a shame that Hornby’s deflated, uninspired script has all the subtlety of a brick thrown through a plate glass window, and not much more intelligence than Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears and Miss Teen South Carolina combined.
Abbreviated by its cult fans as MST3K, this long-running comic sci-fi television series follows the adventures of a man sent into space by a mad, evil scientist. The unlucky space traveller—named Joel in the first few seasons, Mike thereafter—and his robot companions are trapped aboard the Satellite of Love, and are forced to watch Z-grade sci-fi movies. With nothing much else to do, they heckle the characters on screen and comment on the obviously completely awful quality of the acting, sets, effects, music and, most of all, the terrible writing.
Watching First Spaceship on Venus, Laserblast, Werewolf or the horrendously bad Future War with Joel, Mike, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot riffing along makes for oddly fascinating and hilarious viewing. A 20th anniversary collection with those four feature-length episodes—spanning the series’ entire run from the late-’80s to 1999—is available from vendettafilms.co.nz, and includes an extensive three-part documentary on the series as well as 2008 San Diego Comic-Con panel material and trailers.
The horror director’s television series, which ran from for ten years from 1955, helped shape the modern TV crime drama. So, ultimately, Hitch can be thanked for Miami Vice, and blamed for David Caruso’s consistently terrible one-liners on CSI: Miami. You know the kind—he says them while taking off his Matrix-esque sunglasses right before The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” opens the title credits with Roger Daltry’s manic “YEEAAAAAAHHH!!”. Anyway, Hitchcock’s series was much better made than Jerry Bruckheimer’s franchise, although obviously not as flashy.
The half-hour show featured many well-known actors, including Joseph Cotten, Bette Davis, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Walter Matthau, Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford and William Shatner. Yep, that William Shatner. Only about a third of the episodes were directed by Hitch himself, but all feature a sardonic opening monologue from the director in the style of William Castle, and an epilogue that functions mostly to wrap up plot lines, as the brief running time gave the writers little opportunity for narrative digression. The first season is available now from madman.co.nz in a deluxe six-disc set.
The titular duo of temporarily unemployable thespian alcoholics subsist in Camden Town, London at the tail end of the ’60s. Their apartment, more or less swamped by absolute squalor, is as cold, unforgiving and dispiriting as the drab, grey weather outside. So they swap one drizzly clime for another, and go on holiday “by mistake” to Withnail’s rotund homosexual uncle’s home in the countryside. That’s about the extent of the plot, but the film is filled with so many memorable, quotable lines that the story becomes a secondary concern.
Richard E. Grant, in his first feature film role, is superb as Withnail, as is Richard Griffiths as his uncle. Ralph Brown, who plays Danny, the drug-addled layabout who takes over Withnail’s apartment while they’re away, has some of the best lines, including: “You have done something to your brain: you have made it high.” The character recurs in Wayne’s World 2 as Del Preston, who rambles nonsensically in the most hilarious British accent about the time he, Jeff Beck and Keith Moon got Ozzy Osbourne “one thousand brown M&Ms” so he’d go onstage and why Keith Richards cannot be killed by conventional weapons.
This uproarious, unforgettable film is available in a special two-disc edition from vendettafilms.co.nz—with cover art by Ralph Steadman. It comes with a host of extra features including a half-hour retrospective documentary, Withnail and Us, and two audio commentaries.
Todd Solondz is a director perhaps best known for his 1998 film Happiness, a disturbingly bleak yet brilliantly comic film which takes pride of place near the top of lists like The A.V. Club’s “Not Again: 24 Great Films Too Painful To Watch Twice”. His 1996 feature début, available for the first time on DVD, could almost sit alongside its successor—except that it aims to elicit many more laughs from the viewer, rather than just making him squirm. Richard Linklater’s landmark 1992 film Slacker had paved the way for Kevin Smith’s Clerks to be greenlit, which in turn opened the door for Todd Solondz to enter the independent film realm with Welcome to the Dollhouse, a daring coming-of-age black comedy that centres on 13-year-old Dawn Weiner, an awkward teenager in every sense of the word.
Relentlessly tormented by bullies at school, she becomes infatuated with the Jim Morrison-esque lead singer of her nerdy brother’s band, and her sister is kidnapped because Dawn deliberately forgets to give her a message from their mother. The soundtrack is a bizarrely compelling mix of rough-around-the-edges garage rock and selections from Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake. In many ways, the film can be read as a prequel to the 1988 ur-teen-black-comedy, Heathers, wherein Winona Ryder and Christian Slater conspire to eradicate—with bullets, and at point blank range—a high school clique made up of airhead bimbos who address one another as Heather. The world Solondz creates in Dollhouse is enveloped in the same sense of inescapable adolescent ennui and frustration as Penelope Spheeris’ Suburbia and Jonathan Kaplan’s once-banned 1979 cult classic Over The Edge.
The critic and video essayist Matt Zoller Seitz, talking about the TV series Freaks and Geeks, noted that “adolescence [is] a period that grows rosy in the memory but sucks ass when you’re actually living through it.” To its credit, Dollhouse, like Geeks, has that morose ambience down pat.The film was universally praised by critics and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1996. Its brand of pointed dark humour reappears in Solondz’s remarkable but difficult-to-watch 2004 film Palindromes, which references Dollhouse with a title card that reads “In Loving Memory of Dawn Wiener.” Palindromes opens with Dawn’s funeral, revealing that she went to college, gained a lot of weight and eventually committed suicide.
Anthology films are commonplace in the anime genre. Perhaps the most notable recent collection is Memorîzu, re-released after the success of The Animatrix. Genius Party combines the talents of seven anime directors, each of whom has been involved in projects as varied as Akira, Steamboy, TekkenKinkreet, Perfect Blue and Cowboy Bebop.
Their films range from the weird, like Shinji Kimura’s Deathtic 4, which combines a steampunk attitude with Real Monsters-like visuals, to the sublime—like Hideki Futamura’s Limit Cycle, an enchantingly psychedelic meditation on life, the universe and everything that is a collage of still photography, computer graphics and manipulated traditional animation. There are no overarching themes—stylistic or otherwise—so it’s best to treat each instalment as a stand-alone short film, dipping in and out of the collection rather than watching all of them consecutively.
A second disc pairs animatics, storyboards and hand-drawn work-in-progress versions of the shorts with commentary from the director and lead animators. The sequel, Genius Party Beyond, is made up of five films that were not included in the original collection, and screened at the International Film Festival in July; it’ll be out on DVD sometime next year.
A collection of Family Guy cut-away scenes rescued from the cutting-room floor; each is about two minutes long and the disc runs about 50 minutes total. Almost all of them arrive at their punch line by way of an anthropomorphised animal or a rip-off of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon or Jim Henson creation. They represent some of the most crude, disgusting, unimaginatively-titled, offensive and defamatory vignettes MacFarlane has ever produced—a fairly inane series entitled “Sex with…” and an execrably bad bit piece called “Fred Flinstone Takes a Shit” are among the worst—and only about a third of all of them are funny. Sadly, it’s not hard to envisage most of these asides being incorporated back into the series when MacFarlane and his writers run out of gags and the show starts devouring its own entrails, Ouroboros-style, midway through its tenth season.
The best by far—because, paradoxically for MacFarlane, it contains no swear words and comes closest to employing subtle wit, something American humorists find almost impossible to fathom—is called “Backstage with Bob Dylan,” wherein the singer chats with Tom Waits, Popeye and Mohamed Ali. If you can’t envisage the joke, it’s on YouTube, along with a bunch of other Cavalcade scenes—and it’s not prefaced by nearly five minutes of unintentionally hilarious anti-piracy ‘warnings’ that double as self-promotional FOX adverts.
“This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know up front: this is not a love story.” So proclaims the deep-voiced narrator at the start of (500) Days of Summer, the début feature by music video director Marc Webb. The protagonist, Tom, is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a rising star since breaking away from the “that kid from 3rd Rock” label with Brick four years ago. He’s a young man toiling away at a greeting-card company, with aspirations to be an architect and a mildly bleak outlook on life fostered by two things: a love for gloomy ’80s Mancunian pop—he wears both Unknown Pleasures and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” t-shirts, and listens endlessly to Morrisey’s bittersweet balladry—and “a total misreading of the movie The Graduate”. He also reads the essayist, novelist and pseudo-philosopher Alain de Botton, but whether that has any impact on his disposition is left unsaid.
Summer, played by the unfortunately now-typecast Zooey Deschanel, starts work at Tom’s company one day, and—for him, at least—it’s love at first sight. The conceit behind the parenthetical ‘500’ in the title is that Tom and Summer’s relationship lasts for that many days; the film flits back and forward between days, signalled by title cards that flick over like the flight announcement signage in airports. The story is therefore told out of order, in a way—except that it still ticks all the basic three-act ‘conflict–development–resolution’ storytelling boxes, and in that order too.
The soundtrack—like the characters’ costumes, and the film’s mise-en-scène—is calculated to appeal to a certain audience: Feist, Regina Spektor (twice), The Black Lips, The Smiths (also twice) Doves, Spoon, The Clash—and even an unexpectedly perfect use of “Quelqu’un m’a dit” by Carla Bruni help keep the story buoyant. Deschanel seems intent on showing off her singing skills any chance she gets—see also the recent Jim Carrey flop Yes Man—and here she fits in a syrupy karaoke rendition of Nancy Sinatra’s “Sugartown”. (As a bonus, the soundtrack CD includes Deschanel and M. Ward’s reverb-filled rendition of The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want”.) Summer quotes Belle and Sebastian under her high-school yearbook photo, and Simon and Garfunkel make an appearance, too, through Webb’s carefully chosen quotation of the final scene of Mike Nichols’ The Graduate set to the achingly beautiful title track from Bookends; the lyrics couldn’t be more fitting, either: “Time it was, and what a time it was it was / A time of innocence a time of confidences.” Other filmic references include a re-playing of Fellini’s La Strada and Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel’s hilarious lampooning of Bergman’s Persona and The Seventh Seal that play when Tom goes to the movies. Tom’s spontaneous dance number in the middle of the second act is silly but enjoyable, and the spritely, piano-driven score, by Little Miss Sunshine composer Mychael Danna and basso profundo narrator-cum-co-composer Rob Simonsen, perfectly complements the film’s mood.
The writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, only have one prior credit thus far: the second instalment of the horrendous Steve Martin remake of The Pink Panther franchise. Without the constrictions of a prior story though, their abilities shine through: the slyly-implemented jokes are just crude enough to seem fresh, and the way the story is told is relatively original—at least in the romantic comedy genre. Webb’s hands-off direction and simple camerawork—the incorporation of 16mm Polaroid footage, for example, and his utterly brilliant use of dual-plotline split screen at a climactic point in the narrative—is not as flashy as might be expected given his background.
Any number of actresses could have played Summer—Olivia Thirlby, Jenna Malone, Emma Stone (the redhead from Superbad) or maybe even Ellen Page, for but a few examples—but only Deschanel can lend her the requisite chic, mid-’60s London mod vibe; only she could pull off that hairdo and the myriad little pale blue summer dresses the character wears—a different one every scene, just about. Similarly, only Gordon-Levitt could have played Tom; it’s nearly impossible to imagine any other actor of this generation in the role.
Chief among the film’s many surprising elements is its unconventional use of architecture. The film is set in Los Angeles, the most photographed city in the world, but what shines through is not the city’s messy tangle of congested sprawling concrete freeways but rather a verdant, hipster mecca Williamsburg-equivalent subsection of L.A., complete with neatly-maintained, meticulously-designed ‘vintage’ apartments with wrought-iron gates and spectacular views. The historic, exquisitely-designed Bradbury Building, used in the climactic scene of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, appears at the end of the film where it plays an architecture firm where Tom has an interview.
Throwing labels like ‘quirky’ and ‘offbeat’ at a film like this isn’t really helpful, as they wouldn’t stick. (500) Days of Summer might not appeal to everyone—that’s certainly not its ambition—but those who will really enjoy it have probably been anticipating its release for a while now, and for anyone else the trailer should help you decide pretty quickly. The only problem with the film comes at the end—but to explore that here would ruin the experience; suffice it to say that the world keeps on turning, and seasons inevitably change.
Diane Birch—Bible Belt (S-Curve Records, 2009)
Review by Hugh Lilly
Diane Birch moved around a lot when she was growing up—her father, a pastor, was born in South Africa, and the family moved from Michigan to Zimbabwe, and then Australia, when Birch was still in elementary school. At age 10, the family moved back to the US and settled in Portland, Oregon. They were deeply religious—to the point of not interacting with their secular neighbours; thus Birch grew up with little knowledge of pop culture or music outside of the classical repertoire—she learnt to play the piano by ear from age 7—save for church hymns and gospel songs.
It’s not in the least surprising, then, that her début album would be drenched in a gospel sound—Mahalia Jackson and Joan Armatrading loom over the record like spiritual aural Godmothers—but there are numerous other influences as well. Her first foray into popular culture—what she described as losing her “musical virginity”—was seeing the music video for “Bad” by Michael Jackson, which ignited in her “a sort of primal mystery” that cast its spell over her “like never before or since.”
“I stood there watching in complete disbelief,” she recalls. “I remember the feeling so vividly: ‘Was this a real human? What was he wearing? Was he the devil?’” She soon branched out and discovered The Carpenters, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles and, judging from the influences stamped on the record, soul music and the mid-’70s singer-songwriter Laurel Canyon sound—Joni Mitchell, James Taylor et al.
But perhaps one of her biggest influences would come from the opposite coast: Brooklyn-born songstress Carole King released her ground-breaking masterpiece Tapestry in March of 1971, after almost a decade of success writing for The Drifters, The Crystals and Dusty Springfield, among others, in the Brill Building. The rock critic Robert Christgau says about the landmark record that it “liberated [the female voice] from technical decorum”.
On Tapestry, King re-tooled a song she had co-written for The Shirelles, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” and made a massive impact with the soulful, era-defining “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Too Late”. King’s influence on Birch is evident on nearly every track, from the opener “Fire Escape”—which builds from a basic, Dusty Springfield-esque vocal to a pleading, rhapsodic waltz soaked in Rhodes piano and lavish strings—to the closer, “Magic View,” a quiet piano ballad that sees Birch also incorporate the vocal stylings of Sia Furler, the Australian singer who rose to prominence through her work with Zero 7—and, to top it off, there’s a hint of the raspy curl of Beth Gibbons, the lead singer of Portishead.
Another white girl with bangs, and someone the blog Brooklyn Vegan once called an “indie sexpot,” Jenny Lewis took a break from her band Rilo Kiley in 2006 and joined up with The Watson Twins to make one of the best albums of the decade, Rabbit Fur Coat. Replete with a multi-tracked call-and-response gospel choir sound, and brushed with a touch of country, the record alternates between sad songs and songs that are genuinely—but beautifully—depressing. While Bible Belt doesn’t share the same morbid fascination lyrically, there are occasional echoes of Lewis’ style in Birch’s voice, and there are similar themes: Lewis’ religious upbringing figures prominently in songs such as “Born Secular” and “Rise Up With Fists!!”
“Ariel,” the standout track on Bible Belt, echoes early Elton John both superficially in its single-word-man’s-name title—à la “Daniel” and “Levon”—and more tangibly in Birch’s double-tracked vocal delivery, which imitates John’s nuances—particularly at the end of phrases and in the bridge passage. But while it might be melodically reminiscent of early-’70s classics like “Tiny Dancer” and “My Father’s Gun,” the song’s lyrics have obviously been written with our digital age of instant, always-on social networking in mind: “I got news today that you’re go see the Great Wall of China / I guess I’ll see all the pictures on your page… / Does it hurt more to lose you or to love you baby / Or does it hurt more to look at you on my screen?”
Not every track is flawless, though: the Michelle Branch-esque “Mirror, Mirror” has an awful easy-listening commercial gloss to it, and will probably enter regular rotation on The Breeze radio station about a year from now. Elsewhere, “Photograph” is largely forgettable, but is redeemed by a brilliant gospel-inspired coda; “Valentino,” “Choo Choo” and the lead single “Rise Up” are all jaunty, brassy hymns that unfortunately lack a solid core but are enjoyable nonetheless. Birch’s gospel penchant is again indulged on the rambunctious “Don’t Wait Up,” and “Forgiveness” is a sublime horn-filled odyssey with a superb, pulsing bass line and jubilant backing chorus.
A number of critics have erroneously compared Birch to Stevie Nicks; while the Fleetwood Mac lead singer is arguably an aesthetic influence on Birch—not least her imitation of Nicks’ mid-’70s Charlie’s Angel’s-like hairdo—there’s no basis for a musical comparison. Birch has a significantly warmer, more rounded, soulful and upbeat tone to her voice; the only possible point of comparison would be Nicks circa 1973/74 on the album Buckingham Nicks—but even then, before she all but destroyed it with copious cocaine consumption, Nicks’ voice was enveloped in a pronounced Arizona twang.
Birch wrote every track on the album, and the production—by the R ‘n’ B singer Betty Wright and the same engineer who propelled Joss Stone toward stardom—is second-to-none. This is particularly obvious on “Nothing But a Miracle” and “Fools”; in the background of the latter, the session musicians, including Patti Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye, tool about splendidly.
Bible Belt encompasses a wide range of influences and sounds—and, perhaps most remarkably for a début, showcases just as wide a range of soulful vocal styles. The record is an auspicious, praiseworthy first album from a massively talented young artist who deserves to be thrust head-on into the spotlight, however reluctantly she might greet it.
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